Ferdinand von Bredow

Ferdinand von Bredow, 1930

Ferdinand von Bredow (born May 16, 1884 in Neuruppin ; † June 30 or July 1, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German officer , most recently Major General of the Reichswehr . He was a close colleague and confidante of Kurt von Schleicher and, from 1932, Deputy Minister of Defense. Like Schleicher, he was murdered by the National Socialists in the course of the Röhm Putsch .

Life

Ferdinand von Bredow came from the Brandenburg nobility family Bredow . He was a son of the Prussian general of the infantry Hasso von Bredow (1851-1922) and his wife Emilie, born von Zeuner (1859-1953).

He attended the preschool of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Neuruppin and in 1894, when he was ten, moved to the cadet house in Plön . He then attended the Hauptkadettenanstalt and was transferred on March 22, 1902 as a lieutenant to the Queen Elisabeth Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 3 of the Prussian Army in Charlottenburg . For further training, he graduated from the War Academy in Berlin from October 1910 to July 1913 , during which time he advanced to first lieutenant in mid-June 1911 and was assigned to the General Staff from March 22, 1914 .

With the mobilization on the occasion of the First World War , Bredow first became regimental adjutant of the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 77. After he was promoted to captain on November 8, 1914 , he was appointed adjutant of the 26th and later the 38th Reserve Infantry in 1915 . Brigade used. In 1917 he was assigned to the General Staff of the 35th Infantry Division and was assigned to the General Staff of the III. and the VIII Army Corps . With the transfer to the General Staff of the Army on April 21, 1918 Bredow was assigned to the General Staff of the 14th Reserve Division as the first General Staff Officer . Awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords, Bredow was assigned to the Chief of the General Staff of the Army on December 18, 1918 after the Armistice of Compiègne and acted as a liaison officer at the Kolberg command post .

With the formation of the Reichswehr , Bredow was from October 1, 1919 on the staff of Group Command 2 in Kassel . On April 30, 1920 he was assigned to the Defense Department of the Reich Ministry of Defense. Left in this position, he was transferred to Group Command 2 on October 1, 1920, and to Group Command 1 two months later.

In Kassel, Ferdinand von Bredow met his future wife, Anne Wedekind, the daughter of the wholesale merchant Carl Knille. They married in 1920 and their son Carl-Hasso, born on August 26, 1925, emerged from the marriage.

With his appointment as company commander in the 17th Infantry Regiment in Braunschweig , Bredow returned to service on April 1, 1923. During this time he also joined the Association of Members of the Former General Staff e. V. at. He rose to major on April 1, 1924, and on October 1, 1925, he was transferred to the Wehrmacht Department (W) of the Reich Defense Ministry in Berlin. His department head was Kurt von Schleicher . On April 1, 1928, his work in the Reichswehr Ministry was suspended for a year. He was transferred to Neuruppin and took over the post of commander of the newly established 2nd Battalion in the 5th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment , which was previously stationed in Prenzlau . The aim was to re-orient Neuruppin as a garrison town. A warm friendship connected him here with the mayor at the time, Ernst Blümel († 1933). Bredow was promoted to lieutenant colonel in February 1929. In the same year, Bredow returned to the Reichswehr Ministry and took over the management of the Defense Department (Abw) in the Ministerial Office (MA). Schleicher had set up this office, to which the Defense Department was assigned, shortly beforehand in order to be able to enforce an even tighter internal organization. Kurt von Schleicher was head of the ministerial office and thus Bredow's direct superior.

In addition to the tasks of the defense department, Bredow Schleicher's personal "information service" was also subordinate to. Here, among others, Eugen Ott , Schleicher's personal representative, worked closely with Bredow. In this phase of the already significant decline of the Weimar Republic, the defense tasks were very much geared towards internal processes. So Bredow developed, in strictest secrecy, plans for the future deployment of the Reichswehr to protect the state in accordance with Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. He had internal information from leading circles of the NSDAP , the SA, the SS and the KPD. Dossiers were kept on Adolf Hitler , that was an initiative that had been triggered by Schleicher. This included, among other things, a health record about his mental and health status, about treatments with a psychologist in Pasewalk. And in 1931 an encrypted telegram from Hermann Göring to the Italian ambassador in Berlin Luca Orsini Baroni (1871–1948) was able to be deciphered, which contained information on concrete putsch plans. In his position Bredow had enemies to be taken seriously.

In October 1931 he was promoted to colonel and was appointed head of the ministerial office in the event that Schleicher became Reichswehr Minister. In the meantime he had also established himself socially in Berlin. He was a member of several important clubs, including as an extraordinary member of the "Club of Berlin" since May 1931. He was a member of the “gentlemen's club”, ate his meal in the premises of different clubs, met here for talks and thereby established an extensive network in different areas of social life. Above all, he maintained a wide range of business contacts during this time. He was friends and frequented people in the field of public opinion formation. The journalist Bella Fromm (1890–1972) and the editor of the journal Politik und Gesellschaft Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli belonged to this circle . He also maintained close contacts in France. He was particularly friendly with the family of the ambassador of France in Berlin, André François-Poncet (1887–1978), with his wife and their sons. Invitations to the Bredow family's private apartment at Spichernstrasse 15 in Berlin were part of the normal social ritual. When Schleicher became Reichswehr Minister on June 2, 1932, Bredow followed him as acting chief in the ministerial office and thus also became Schleicher's deputy. After Schleicher was appointed Reich Chancellor in December 1932 , Bredow took over the management of the Reichswehr Ministry.

In early 1933 Bredow was promoted to major general. In January, alongside Eugen Ott and Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord , he pleaded for a military coup with the use of the Reichswehr to prevent the Schleicher government from being overthrown. When Schleicher did not accept these plans and resigned as Chancellor at the end of January 1933, Franz von Papen was commissioned by Reich President Hindenburg on January 28 to form a government in which Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. After Hitler took office on January 30, 1933 and Werner von Blomberg took over the Reichswehr Ministry, Bredow learned on the same day that he had to resign. That came as a complete surprise to him. But after a conversation with Blomberg he submitted his departure on February 1, 1933 and was immediately replaced by Walter von Reichenau .

Final years (1933–1934)

A trip to Paris planned by Bredow in January 1934 turned into a minor state affair. He got letters of recommendation from French and English attachés in Berlin, which were supposed to "open doors" for him in Paris. The police took him off the train at the Herbesthal border station , found the diplomatic letters and arrested him. At the instigation of Reichswehr Minister Blomberg, however, he was released again. It is very likely that he was already under special observation by the Nazi security apparatus when he traveled to France again on March 17, 1933. Here he had a meeting with the German ambassador in Paris Roland Köster . Almost at the same time, a Parisian emigrant publisher published the anonymous diary of a Reichswehr general . The leaders of the NSDAP mistakenly assumed that Bredow was the anonymous author of the book.

In the late afternoon of June 30, 1934, Bredow found out about the murder of Schleicher and his wife in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Despite the warnings he received, he decided to stay with his family. On the evening of the same day, Bredow was arrested by four civilians in his apartment on Spichernstrasse 15. They had gained entry through the back entrance of the house through a caretaker. From the apartment, their destination was the SS-Kaserne Lichterfelde in Finckensteinallee. However, upon arrival there, Ferdinand von Bredow was already dead. He had two gunshot wounds in the head. During a house search shortly after he was abducted, the Gestapo mainly looked for and took away personal documents, official documents that he had kept in the apartment, and letters, especially those relating to his contacts in France.

The brother-in-law Curt von Schroeter tried several times in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse to clear up the undeclared arrest. It was not until July 6, 1934, that Bredow's death was orally admitted to him by officers of the Secret State Police. The official notification then took place on July 9th. The death certificate showed the date July 1, 1934 at 10:45 a.m. His wife was urged to perform the burial of the urn in silence. Ferdinand von Bredow's funeral took place at the Köpernitz forest cemetery in the Heinrichsdorf district near the manor house of his in-laws.

Ferdinand von Bredow's grave at the Köpernitz forest cemetery, Heinrichsdorf district of the city of Rheinsberg

At the time of Bredow's arrest, his son Carl Hasso (1925–2011) was eight years old. After his father was murdered, he received an education allowance of 150 Reichsmarks per month.

reception

Various possible motives for Ferdinand von Bredow's murder are assumed in historical research. On the one hand, it is assumed that his violent death was a logical consequence of the murder of the former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher on June 30, 1934 as part of the " Röhm Putsch ". Ferdinand von Bredow was considered to be politically like-minded and closest confidante of Schleicher since 1920, whom he had followed step by step as successor to the respective office, especially since 1929. From around 1930, both of their views and actions were aimed at preventing the National Socialists and especially Adolf Hitler from taking power.

On the other hand, it is assumed that Bredow was familiar with delicate - and possibly compromising - internal matters of the NSDAP through his previous activity as head of the defense department in the Reichswehr Ministry . Another theory focuses on the personal persecution of Bredow by Hermann Göring . In a conversation with Bredow in November 1932, Goering had offered to set up an aviation ministry, declaring that he was ready to do so under a chancellor other than Hitler. After Hitler's " seizure of power ", so the thought, Göring wanted to get rid of the unpleasant confidante of his brief doubts about Hitler's success in the struggle for power and the deliberate defection.

Memorial stele

Memorial plaque in front of the house at Spichernstrasse 15 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

For the 124th birthday of Bredows on May 16, 2008, in the presence of, among others, the son Carl-Hasso von Bredow, the Bundeswehr Brigadier General Christian Westphal , the head of the German Resistance Memorial Center Johannes Tuchel and the editor of Bredows' notes from 1933 / 34, Irene Strenge , in front of the house at Spichernstrasse 15 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf , where the family lived from 1930 to 1934, a memorial stele with an inscription was unveiled. It reads "on the orders of Hitler and Göring he was murdered by the SS on the night of June 30th to July 1st, 1934". The Federal Minister of Defense took on the sponsorship of the table .

Carl-Hasso von Bredow, who later worked as a banker at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt / M. worked, was, among other things, guest of honor at the public vow of Bundeswehr recruits in front of the Berlin Reichstag building on July 20, 2010, and he reported to school classes on various occasions about the events and circumstances of the time.

See also

• List of people killed in the course of the Röhm putsch

literature

• Dermot Bradley (ed.), Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Markus Rövekamp: The Generals of the Army 1921–1945. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 2: v. Blanckensee – v. Czettritz and Neuhauß. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1993, ISBN 3-7648-2422-0 , pp. 242-243.
• Irene Strenge: Ferdinand von Bredow. Notes from February 20, 1933 to December 31, 1933. Daily records from January 1st, 1934 to June 28th, 1934 ( Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungen , Volume 39). Duncker & Humblot Publishing House, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-428-12960-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Nobeligen houses. 1903. Fourth year, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1902, p. 197.
2. ↑ Reichswehr Ministry (Ed.): Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 116.
3. ↑ Irene Strenge: Ferdinand von Bredow. Duncker & Humblot Verlag, Berlin 2009, p. 33
4. ↑ Carl-Hasso Bredow, * August 26, 1925, † February 21, 2011 on Trauer.nrw
5. ↑ So far from fear, so close to death ' . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1957, pp. 20th ff . ( online ).
6. ^ Memorial stele for Ferdinand von Bredow on berlin.de , accessed on January 23, 2012.
7. ^ "Defend law and freedom bravely" at bundestag.de , accessed on January 23, 2012.